


but unreserved honesty

by roadhymns



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Honeypot, Loss of Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 08:19:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18545914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roadhymns/pseuds/roadhymns
Summary: As she looked over the dossier Waverly had given her, her stomach had churned. The worry that inexperience might give her away, that the mark might know, that in any way he might think of it as a conquest - it was sour in her mouth.And then she had thought, unbidden, of Illya: his large cold hands, and the ill-hidden want on his face.





	but unreserved honesty

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, it's a virgin Gaby fic, I'm as shocked as anyone. I made the fatal error of letting redbrunja know this fic existed in draft form in early 2016, and she has constantly harassed me to finish and post it since, going as far as sending me unsolicited draft revisions full of encouragement and suggestions. Now, three and a half years later, it is posted and I assume I am finally free. In summary: old draft risen from the crypt that is my gdocs, it's all red's fault, place blame squarely at her feet, etc etc.

“Good morning,” Waverly says, pulling out the fourth chair at their table.

“Good morning, sir,” Napoleon replies, tone pleasant and even as he folds down the newspaper he was reading. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

Gaby, for her part, merely returns her cafe au lait to its saucer and joins Illya in mistrustful silence.

Waverly sits and motions for coffee. “Bad news, I’m afraid,” he says, “but considering the warm welcome from Teller and Kuryakin, I assume you already knew that.”

They did know that - Illya had spotted Waverly coming as soon as he’d turned the corner of the street upon which their little bistro sat, and since Waverly had initially declined to leave British soil for this mission due to being “terribly, terribly busy,” group consensus had immediately leapt to trouble. Gaby slumps back into her chair sullenly at this confirmation, the wrought iron cool through the fabric of her blouse. 

“Last night, I am told, our mark found himself in a spot of trouble when one of his newer acquaintances turned out to be a mole. No one from our side - any of our sides - fortunately; it seems to be more of an internal quarrel for the French. But it means security has been tightened considerably.” 

So much for the recon they had done yesterday, then. Napoleon finishes folding his newspaper and sets it down on the table. “No chance you’re pulling us out, I suppose? Regroup and try again when guards are back down?”

“Ah, no, Solo,” Waverly says, adjusting his glasses. “An unfortunate side effect of this little unpleasantness is that we have a new timetable. My sources are telling me that Lavoie has arranged a new dropoff date of tomorrow evening, having reevaluated his position and finding the documents a little too hot for his liking.”

To Gaby’s right, Illya rolls his head and shoulders, looking pensive. “No good going for the house, then,” he says. “Can we ambush during transportation?”

“That’s an option, although perhaps a little last-minute for comfort,” Waverly says, then smiles and nods at the waiter as his coffee arrives. He moves the cup to his elbow and reaches into his breast pocket to withdraw an envelope. “As you know, Lavoie’s sister is hosting a party tonight. Security will be much lighter there.”

The envelope, once opened, contains a small stack of photographs.

“These are Lavoie’s last four known … paramours,” Waverly continues, placing the photographs one by one on the table. As the last one is set down, Napoleon makes a tutting noise out of the side of his mouth and looks away, down the street. It takes Gaby just a moment longer than him to work it out, and she feels her lips purse.

Illya is the last one still looking at the photographs, each one of a different woman, all of them brunette, fine-featured, and petite. His head jerks up suddenly and he looks between Gaby with her arms crossed in front of her chest and Waverly, who’s unnaturally invested in stirring sugar into his coffee.

_“No,”_ he says vehemently.

Gaby doesn’t bother acknowledging him, keeping her eyes trained on Waverly, who has to eventually concede and look up at her from over the top of his hornrims.

“It isn’t the only option,” Waverly says at last. “But it is the safest, and the quickest.”

“No,” Illya says again, as Napoleon continues to act as if he is somewhere, anywhere else.

“It’s your choice, Teller,” Waverly says.

“Fine,” she says. “Give me the information.”

\--

She knocks on Illya’s door at a quarter past four in the afternoon. Her hair is twisted up fashionably; dabs of Oh! de London sit on her pulse points. There is a fire under her skin, burning her nerves out one by one. When the door isn’t opened quickly enough, she knocks again, harder, relishing the sharp rap of her knuckles against the wood.

The door cracks open then, and a three-inch width of Illya comes into sight. She steps forward to push by him, and for a moment he holds his position, like he’s thinking about trying to keep her out. He relents when she shoves harder, but as soon as she’s into the room, she understands why he hesitated. A lamp lies shattered on the floor, long shards of porcelain littering the carpet. A chair is overturned. On the bed, he has both his P38 and his Makarov disassembled and cleaned, with his kit sitting mostly packed nearby.

He shuts the door gently behind her.

“What were you planning to do?” she asks, keeping her tone dangerously neutral as she turns around to face him. 

He won’t look at her, just stares out the open window. A muscle in his neck jumps and she sees his fingers stutter briefly against his thigh. She notes that he’s wearing dark, nondescript clothing, cut loose enough to allow plenty of movement, and his shoulder holster is already strapped into place.

“Because,” she continues, letting the steel come out, “it _looks_ like you were planning to do something very, very stupid. Was Solo in on this?”

“No,” he says, voice rough with anger or shame or both. “Just me.”

She stalks over and slaps him across the mouth. It’s clearly telegraphed, every inch of the way, but he doesn’t try to block or dodge. He staggers a little under the blow when it comes, something she suspects stems more from the psychological force than the physical.

“You wanted to go off-mission, with no backup, into a high-threat situation,” she hisses, the slow heat of earlier kindling now in a new and furious direction, so hot she thinks it might burn her away. “You would botch the mission, get yourself killed! For what? My _honor?_ Or are you that jealous?”

His gaze has shifted to the floor behind her, fists balled into the material of his trousers. “No, I - ”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t come, hm? Those men, they would kill you if they caught you. You could have been dead before we even knew you were gone.”

“They would not catch me,” he mutters. The arrogance of him! Her palm still tingles from the first time, but she wants to slap him again. She settles for scoffing instead, and yet he still flinches.

She turns on her heel, walks over to his bed, picks up the Makarov’s magazine, and slowly and deliberately unloads it. He’s watching her now, eyes following every click-click-click of the rounds sliding out. When she’s done, she does the same for the P38, then unsnaps the bag she’s wearing across her body and dumps all of the ammunition inside. She knows that he has more, that reloading is as simple as digging a spare magazine out of his bag, but she feels as though she’s made her dissatisfaction adequately known. She reassembles both pistols, the clacks of the pieces fitting together loud in the quiet of the room, and puts them on the bedside table.

He’s still rooted near the door by the time she’s finished her little scene. 

“What do you want,” he says at last, the flatness of his voice grinding the question away from the words. If he’s angry, it’s a different kind than the one that precedes broken furniture and bleeding knuckles.

Gaby sets her jaw. “I want you to follow the plan.”

“No,” he says, “what do you want.”

Oh. Why is she in his room. A flush crawls up the back of her neck and she grasps at her anger to fend off embarrassment.

“There were details of tonight I _had_ wanted to discuss with you,” she says, trying for dismissive.

“Details,” he repeats flatly. “About tonight.”

“What I’m to do,” she clarifies.

His eyes are slowly narrowing, trying to work out what it is she’s not saying. “And you want … my advice, on this? Not my area of expertise.”

“Or mine,” she tells him. She is gripping the strap of her bag so hard that she can hear the leather creaking. “I haven’t done this before, Illya.”

He is deathly still, standing between her and the door, just looking at her. She grits her teeth against the shame and adds, “With anyone.”

For the span of a few heartbeats, neither of them move. Then he starts, a whole-body jolt, and goes into motion; Gaby immediately mirrors him. “I am calling Waverly,” he says, voice thick, heading for the phone by the bed. She moves to block him; he tries to sidestep her, but she catches him by the arm. This dance feels familiar. “Let go,” he growls. “I will not let him force you into this.”

“No one’s _forcing me_ into anything,” she snaps, and her tone seems to take some of the fight out of him. 

It’s embarrassingly sentimental of her. She doesn’t prize this thing about herself, isn’t ashamed to lose it - would’ve done so earlier if any man in Berlin had caught her attention and lived up to her expectations. In many ways, it would’ve made all of this easier. But as she looked over the dossier Waverly gave her, her stomach had churned. The worry that inexperience might give her away, that Lavoie might know, that in any way he might think of it as a conquest - it was sour in her mouth. 

She had thought, unbidden, of Illya: his large cold hands, and the ill-hidden want on his face.

The image came with an idea nipping at its heels, the sort of idea that planted itself in her mind, sent out roots that twined themselves around her nervous system until she was like a stranger in her own body. She had watched with nervous detachment as she put on a dress he had chosen for her and pinned her hair up to show off her shoulders, had touched perfume to her neck and low on her sternum and, feeling a little ridiculous, behind her knees. 

And now she’s here, and he’s trying to go and get himself killed rather than just letting her do her damn job.

She slides her hand down from where she was gripping his arm, over the bones of his wrist, into his cool palm, and she fits her fingers lightly around his much larger ones. He looks down at their hands, then at her face, and she can see the moment he understands.

“Oh,” he breathes. He closes his eyes, just for a second. “Gaby, do not do this.”

She doesn’t say anything in response to that, just rubs her thumb against the soft skin on the inside of his wrist and waits.

“No,” he says at last, turning his face away from her.

Gaby drops his hand and takes a step back. His fingers twitch once against the empty space she left, then curl. She studies his profile for a moment, the way he looks at a piece of the lamp lying alone on the floor, away from the ruins of the rest.

“Fine,” she says airily. “I’m sure Napoleon would be willing to help.”

It’s petty and it’s cruel, and it makes her a little ashamed to see just how well the low blow connects.

He sways back, as if dealt a mortal wound, then rights himself with a sudden and tangible fury. He seizes the wingchair from next to the bed and sends it skittering, upturned, halfway across the room. A mirror breaks with the sounds of splintering wood and tinkling glass. The luggage rack goes flying toward the door.

In the middle of the room stands Gaby, the eye of the storm.

As quickly as it started, it’s over. He covers his face with one hand, his shoulders rising and falling sharply with each breath. If she didn’t know him, if he were a different man, it might almost look like he was crying.

“Go, then,” he says, voice shaking. “Go on, go have your talk with Cowboy. I am sure if you ask, he will oblige.”

She forces herself to regard him evenly, though her heart is pounding in her chest. It is one thing to see the aftermaths of his episodes, and another to stand there with him as he explodes, knowing on a primal level that he could break her.

“Would you no longer want me, if I slept with Napoleon?” she asks, keeping her tone cool.

“I would want you still,” he says, sounding choked.

“Would you hate him if he agreed?”

“No.” It’s barely above a whisper. “He would do it because you asked him.”

“Then why won’t you?”

He looks at her then, and the scar beside his eye seems dark and fresh in the light filtered in through the far window. “Waverly, he found you in chop shop, yes? Two, two and a half years now?”

“Yes,” she says slowly, wary at this sudden change.

“And he kept you there, waiting for Nazis. How many missions have you been on, Gaby?”

She shifts uncomfortably.

“You don't know, yet, what they make you give.” There is something terrible about him in this moment, huge and foreign and broken, and she’s reminded of how, four months ago, he was an enemy, an oppressor, another KGB agent prowling through East Berlin. “You do a good job, they make you do that job ten times over. Push for more, until _more_ is normal, then ask for more again.”

“For god's sake, Illya, it's just sex,” she says, nervous now and not knowing why. “And it was my choice.”

“How is it a choice, if you have no other choice to make?” he demands. “Sex or starve, sex or prison. Sex or failure. How is this a choice?”

She stares at him, bewildered by this turn in the conversation, unable to immediately follow. His hands are shaking, and suddenly it all seems to click for her: the vague notes in his file, the way he put his fist through a wall the last time Solo mentioned his mother, the destroyed furniture all over this very room. How many times did he have to endure his mother _entertaining_ others, in the aftermath of what happened to his father? What did he have to watch her give?

“This isn’t like that,” she tells him, willing it to be true.

“You don’t know, yet,” he says again, dark and hollow.

“I’m scared,” she blurts, then tosses her head in disbelief at herself, fighting a sudden burning in her sinuses. “Okay? I am scared. Don’t you dare think that I’m being flippant here.”

He moves toward her then, and the closer he gets, the less he looks like something frightening and the more he simply looks like _Illya._ After only a moment’s hesitation, he reaches up and cups her face in his hands, thumbs ghosting over her cheekbones. “Do not do this,” he says, but more gently than before. “We will infiltrate as originally planned - Cowboy will go along with it.”

She shakes her head minutely, acutely conscious of the way he is touching her. “You heard Waverly - it’s too dangerous now.”

He makes a _tch_ sound, soft and indulgent. She thinks he means to be reassuring, but all it does is emphasize to her how much she stands to lose if things were to go wrong. She covers his hands with her own, turns to brush her lips against one of his palms.

“Just help me with this,” she says. “Please.”

There is a long moment where she doesn’t think he breathes. Then he groans, a quiet and hurt sound, and bends to press his forehead to hers, and she knows now that he’ll do whatever she asks of him.

She steps back from him just long enough to grab the arm of the wingchair and tug it back to rights. She pulls it as far as the foot of the bed before he takes over and easily maneuvers it back into its former place between the headboard and the table in the corner. When he turns again, she is standing just behind him, and she studies the way his posture goes stiff and expectant.

He hasn’t tried to kiss her since Rome, since they found out they were to be working together for the foreseeable future. This has suited her fine these past few months, because she has thrown herself fully into developing as a field agent. Illya wasn’t wrong earlier; she’s green, working off of instincts rather than experience. She has a lot to prove - to her partners, to UNCLE, to herself. She doesn’t want to give them any reason to be done with her. So maybe she has seen the way Illya still looks at her, the way he softens when she is around. But they stay in separate rooms now, and she has been busy.

She takes the last half-step separating them and reaches up to lay her hands on his chest. He’s warm and solid through his clothes. She smiles up at him, then pushes the leather straps of his holster down over his shoulders, until she finds the place where they pin his arms behind his back. As she does so, she stands on her toes to press delicate kisses to his jaw, his chin, his throat, and watches his eyes go half-lidded as his head tracks toward her, trying to catch her mouth with his. She lets him get close, then ducks away with a ballerina’s grace, a sweet little swoop of her body. She can see the muscles in his arms flex against the holster in an aborted move to bring her back, to hold her to him.

“Gaby,” he growls, having understood now the nature of her game, and shifts his shoulders like a big cat.

She sidles back up to him, still with a curve at the corners of her mouth, and pulls him down by the front of his shirt to finally, finally kiss him properly. His lips are soft and dry and he exhales shakily into it, irritation vanished like a wisp of smoke. She runs her free hand into the hair behind his ear and he shudders. His eyes are closed and his brows are drawn, like he is concentrating on this moment; looking at him through her lashes, she wonders how he ever summoned the will to initially tell her no.

Without warning, she lets go of him and tugs on the leather of the holster, pulling it off the widest part of his biceps and letting it drop loosely off his arms and into her hands. She steps back quickly from him and spins around, wads the straps up, and throws the holster as hard as she can into the far corner of the room. It hits the wall with a satisfying thump and falls behind a standing lamp.

She turns back to look at him, fixing her fiercest look on her face. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t look toward the corner. After the span of a few heartbeats, she nods.

“Sit,” she commands.

He falls back into the wingchair as breathlessly as if she’d pushed him, and she feels a familiar thrill go through her. She toes her shoes off and leaves them and her bag by the side of the bed, then moves in toward his lap. The upholstery is rough against her knees when she plants them on either side of his thighs, and she can feel the heat of his body on the inside of her legs.

She closes her own eyes when she kisses him this time, concentrates on the feel of him under her. She has wanted this, but she long ago learned to live without the things she wants. Oh, she’ll take what she needs, but wanting is a luxury in which she only occasionally indulges. She has wanted Illya, wanted the length and breadth of him, wanted the depth of him, the anger and the fear and the sweetness of him. She has wanted him in the way his shirts pull across his shoulders, in the way he smiles when he lies, in the way he steals looks at her when he thinks he won’t be caught. But for her, wanting comes twisted with disappointment. She wanted her freedom, and she got Waverly’s long game. She wanted the Wartburg she bought with her pitiful wages, and Napoleon wedged it to an ignoble end in an alleyway. So she tells herself it was better to wait until she needed Illya, because need makes things simple.

She bunches the material at the bottom of his shirt and tugs it loose from its tuck, then slides her hands underneath. He shifts beneath her, making soft noises into her mouth as she runs her palms over his stomach, across his ribs, up his sternum, through the hair that trails from his navel to the waistband of his trousers. She breaks away to help him take his shirt off entirely, then sits back against his knees to admire him, the paleness of his skin dotted with the occasional spot and crisscrossed with the white and red of old scars.

He only puts up with the appraisal for so long before he’s drawing her back in. His grip on her thigh is nearly bruising, leveraging her up so he can kiss her, and she hisses in a breath and pushes him back away from her, leaving him looking confused and contrite. “No marks,” she warns.

There is a flash of hurt that crosses his face at that, as if he had forgotten for a moment why this is happening. Then, just as quickly, he schools it away and nods.

She extends an olive branch by pressing her lips to him, as sweetly as she can manage, on the cheek and the temple and right at the corner of the scar next to his eye. This time, when he turns his head to meet her, she lets him.

Finally allowed the lead, he kisses like a man starved, with no concept of how to pace himself. She’s dizzy with it, the open-mouthed heat of it. When she has to break away for breath, he buries his face into the perfumed length of her throat, then begins to work his way down towards the skin exposed by her low neckline.

His hands have been moving slowly up from her knees, more gently this time, coaxing her into a straight-legged kneel so he has better access. She glances down to see the hem of her dress ruched around his wrists and bites at the inside of her lip, waiting. His fingers finally reach the top of her thighs, then her hips are cupped in the vastness of his hands. It seems to take him a moment to realize that there’s nothing but skin under his palms, no cotton or silk, but when he does, he starts and looks up at her with wide eyes. She tilts her head and stares him down, face impassive, until he drops his head to her chest, and she can feel the shudder in his hands.

He seems to need a moment, which unnerves her. She has seen him kill men without a second thought, but the touch of her skin and the knowledge of her intent has overwhelmed him. For the first time, she wonders if she has made a mistake, if she has rushed into something she does not quite understand. She can’t think of that now, though - can’t let doubt crowd in, not with a deadline looming.

She nudges him aside and, with a few twists of her body, strips the dress off. Like that, she is naked, naked with a man for the first time in her life. She hears his sharp inhale, but she is a woman with purpose, so she simply drops her dress beside the chair and leans back enough to work at his belt buckle.

“Gaby,” he rasps, and circles her wrists with his hands, stilling her.

Illya wears his want so nakedly that it almost hurts to look at him, and she wonders what other times he’s had, what other women he’s looked at like this. She feels a flare of possessiveness, sudden and sharp and hypocritical, and she pulls out of his grasp and drags him up to her by the back of the neck. She catches his lower lip between her teeth and digs her nails into his scalp, satisfied when he groans and has to settle for nothing more than skating his palms over her, lest he leave bruises. For a moment she does entertain the thought of fingertip-sized marks on her hips, the aching reminder that would accompany every movement. Another time, maybe.

His knuckles brush against the underside of one breast and she releases him, only to attack his belt again with renewed determination. It slips easily from the loops and joins her dress on the floor. She intends to go for the button next, but gives into curiosity and temptation instead and presses the heel of her palm into the bulge in his trousers, dragging her hand down in one rough stroke.

He lurches to his feet like a shot, carrying her with him with one arm locked under her hips, and she can’t help gasping. It’s a short trip, though - just a twist and he folds again to sit on the edge of the bed, pulling her into his lap. 

“In my case,” he says at last, and she’s not sure she’s ever heard his voice so deep or so vulnerable. It sends a line of heat right through her. “In my case,” he tries again. “I have - ”

She tilts her head to look at him, because it’s clear he’s embarrassed. Then it dawns on her - he’s trying to tell her he has condoms. She’s surprised; she’d thought Russians weren’t much for them, and they’d certainly been unpopular on the eastern side of the wall. She wonders if he purchased them with purpose, with her in mind, if he suspected or hoped that something like this might one day happen. She imagines it for a moment: Illya in a chemist’s shop, cap tugged low, buying prophylactics. Her amusement must show on her face, because his brows draw together.

She kisses him there, in the middle of the forehead, thumbs resting against his temples. “It’s handled,” she says.

The first thing after Istanbul, she’d gone to Waverly and practically demanded that he procure her a prescription for the pill that people had been smuggling across from West Berlin for the past few years. _Oh god,_ he’d intoned, like he didn’t even want to think about it, and quickly passed her off to his secretary. Now each month’s packet lives inside a hidden pocket in her purse, next to a compact sidearm and a UK passport with her name in it. She supposes one day these items won’t thrill her anymore, but she’s too newly free to find them ordinary quite yet.

Illya goes easily when she pushes him down onto his back, sprawling out. He’s nearly too big for the bed; it should be funny, but somehow, in this moment, it isn’t. He looks up at her with something too close to wonder for her to handle. She is straddling him with her hands braced on the broad expanse of him, and he reaches up to wrap his fingers around her elbow; she realizes with a start that he will let her do anything she wants to him, but she has no idea where to begin. She has gotten herself to this point by relying on instinct, but now she has started second-guessing herself, her nerves jangling.

“Illya,” she says, at a loss.

“Yes,” he agrees, nonsensical, stroking up her arms, then down her sides.

She balls her hands into fists against his chest. “I don’t - “ she starts, then locks her teeth together. How can she tell him that she doesn’t know what she’s doing? She’s an adult, she knows what sex is, how it works, even if she hasn’t experienced it herself just yet.

But she doesn’t have to say it, because his expression goes impossibly softer, and then he pushes himself back up so he’s sitting again on the edge of the bed, her hands on his shoulders.

“Second thoughts?” he asks, gentle and sincere enough that it does nothing but infuriate her. As if they had the luxury of her changing her mind. She scratches her nails down sharp over his collarbones and lets that be her answer.

He doesn’t even wince, instead searching her face for a long moment while she glares defiantly back. Whatever he’s looking for, he must be satisfied, because he wraps his hands around her hips and reclines again, this time dragging her up the length of his body as he goes.

“ _Illya,_ ” she warns, then gasps out loud when he shoulders her knees further apart without fanfare and buries his face between her thighs.

She’s brought herself off before, in the bath after she’d scrubbed the black grease from beneath her fingernails, or in bed on rare lazy mornings. She knows the workings of her body like she knows the workings of a familiar engine, knows how to pull herself apart and put herself back together with learned precision. But she has no reference for this, for the heat and intensity of his mouth, for the broad drag of his tongue against her. She pitches forward, bracing herself against the headboard as her legs begin to shake. Each throaty noise he makes seems to vibrate straight through her until she’s quaking with it, bucking against his hands on her hips, grinding down onto the sweet pressure of his chin. 

She comes like this, kneeling over him. He kisses the trembles in her thighs and stomach for long moments, then sits up and slides her down to the bed to catch her breath. His hair is mussed and his eyes are bright as he leans over her, and he grabs the edge of a pillowcase to wipe at his face.

Before she can overthink it, she reaches up to kiss him. She licks what she can only assume is her own taste from his mouth, and he groans lowly. She thinks she might like to kiss him more than today allows, that one day she’d like a chance to kiss him until she’s had her fill, until their mouths are bruised with it, and learn everything about the way he tastes, the way he sounds, the way he feels.

Soon enough, though, he is pulling away, then getting out of bed. He strips out of the rest of his clothes, and she takes a moment to just look at him, all of him, his long limbs and the livid marks where she’d scratched him, the cut of his waist and his half-hard cock. For a long moment, he stands there at the bedside, just looking at her in his bed.

“Well?” she demands, sitting up a little, bracing herself on her elbows.

“How do you want - ?” he starts to ask.

“I don’t know!” she snaps, because nothing gets her angry like being nervous. “I told you I’ve never done this before.”

“Yes, you did,” he says, contemplative, then kneels on the edge of the bed before stretching himself out atop her. He’s huge, of course; it isn’t something she ever forgets, really, but she can’t say she’s ever been as aware of it as she is right now, with Illya bracing himself above her, his body completely covering hers.

His hand slides along her leg, maneuvering her until he can settle between her thighs. She peeks down between their bodies and sees him take himself in hand, rolling the foreskin back, slotting the head against her.

He glances up at her face one last time; if he asks if she’s having second thoughts again, she may hit him. But he doesn’t - he just drops his eyes and begins to push in.

It is not precisely comfortable, or pleasurable, feeling her body adjust to him that first time. She stares past him, at the afternoon sun that paints the ceiling, breathing through the unfamiliar sensation, through the knowledge that the blunt heat she feels is him inside her.

“Gaby,” he rumbles, his knuckles brushing her cheek. He’s so deep in her now that it’s driving most other thoughts from her mind, but she manages to look at him like he clearly wants. “You are okay?”

“Fine,” she lies through her teeth. “Is that all you’ve got?”

He blinks at her, then huffs out a little laugh.

He reaches down to adjust her hips again, pulls most of the way out, then slowly thrusts back into her. Gaby lets her eyes roll back to the ceiling as he starts to find a rhythm. If this is all sex is, she thinks, she needn’t have worried so much.

Illya makes a little noise in his throat that draws her attention back to him. His eyes are closed and his lips are softly parted, like he is concentrating. As she watches, a shudder runs through his shoulders. Without much conscious thought, Gaby reaches up and touches the side of his throat, and he groans like she is killing him, the steady pace he’d set faltering, the hand he isn’t using for balance reaching out to tangle with hers.

She realizes with sudden and shocking clarity that she has indeed made a mistake, and a bad one. She asked a favor of him that has cost him something, that has forced him to show her something that he has been keeping from her. She knew he wanted her, but she is afraid to discover that it may actually be more than simple want.

Sometimes she fears that all she knows how to do is fight, that anything kind or gentle in her was slowly driven out, crushed beneath the heels of the Red Army, the reputation of her father, the weight of the wall. She thought climbing into a bed with Illya Kuryakin, the KGB’s best, would be like fighting; she came ready to bite and claw her way to victory, to tumble him as she has done before. She doesn’t know what to do with the quick, sweet rolls of his hips, or the whisper of stubble against her hair as he presses his lips to her temple. It makes her feel small and mean, like she is the one stealing something from him.

When he comes, it’s quiet, just a few off-rhythm thrusts punctuated with a short, soft exhalation into the skin of her neck. She soon feels him softening within her; when he rolls to brace himself on one elbow, he slips out. She’s surprised by the sense of loss.

She doesn’t feel done, exactly, but she supposes they must be, if he has finished. But he spends only a moment studying her, then skims his hand over her lower belly, slides it between her legs. She’s slick and warm and open from him, sensitive enough that his first touch makes her gasp. It doesn’t take long for him to bring her off again with his thumb, two fingers buried in her third-knuckle deep. He kisses her open-mouthed as her hips buck, swallows her noises.

When she has gone still and boneless and sated, he collapses to the mattress, pulls her atop him, pulls the blanket up around them both. With careful precision, he begins to pull the pins from her hair, loosening the strands until he can card a hand through them, then cradle the back of her head.

They stay like that for a long time, long enough for her to notice the quality of the light coming through the window change. Afternoon is fading; evening is taking the stage. She has to be ready for the car Waverly is sending at seven. She rolls off of him and perches on the edge of the mattress.

“Stay,” he murmurs, the first thing he’s said in ages, and he puts his hand on her arm. 

He doesn’t tighten his grip, doesn’t try to force her, but she sees the way his expression shutters when she pulls free. She takes him by that same hand, braces her thumb in his palm, brushes the rough skin of his knuckles. Slowly, with as much tenderness as she can still manage, she kisses his fingertips, one by one, lips pressed softly to the cool whorls. She kisses the pulse point in his wrist, feels his tendons shifting, memorizes the strong, steady beat of his heart. Finally she leans across him and catches his mouth with her own. His eyes are closed when she pulls away, lashes grazing his cheeks.

She stands and pulls her dress back on, then picks up her shoes and bag and heads for the door.

\--

In the end, she does not have to fuck Michel Lavoie.

She catches his eye as intended, and - after an hour or so of careful flirting - is invited down the street to his home. She clutches at him as they walk, runs her hands over him in a semblance of eagerness. She lets him pull her up the stairs to his room, past the guards who are unconcerned with another drunk conquest. When Lavoie asks her to pour drinks while he undresses, she laces his wine. He’s not very good at sussing people out; he’s just a small-timer who accidentally landed a big catch. She spends a few minutes arching over him in bed, kissing him while he fondles her breasts, and then he’s out like a light.

She finds a locked box behind a heating grate, and with Napoleon feeding instructions into her ear, it’s not long before she’s tucking the documents into the lining of her purse and replacing them with UNCLE-produced mock-ups. That done, she rakes her hands through her hair, pulls her dress slightly askew, carries her shoes by the straps. She tiptoes down the stairs while looking vaguely ashamed, and the guards hardly spare her a second glance.

\--

The cab she gets into afterward is three blocks southward from Lavoie’s before Napoleon unfolds himself from under the passenger side dash, appearing like a snake from a charmer’s basket. Despite the indignity of his hiding place and the thick set of headphones he’s wearing, he’s miraculously unrumpled. It makes her oddly self-conscious, and she tries to surreptitiously tug her dress back to rights.

“Well _done,_ ” he says cheerfully, and she hears the tinny echo of the words a split second later inside her earpiece. She yanks it out, then drops it into Napoleon’s waiting hand. “I couldn’t have performed better myself. Don’t you think, Peril?”

From the driver’s seat, Illya - cap pulled down to hide his face - makes a noncommittal noise. 

Napoleon, who is twisted halfway around to talk to her, gives him a considering look, then glances back at Gaby. He’s too perceptive by half, she realizes. He underestimated her once, and he won’t do it again. He tips his chin in Illya’s direction and raises his eyebrows quickly - _can you believe this guy?_ \- and Gaby is sure it’s a test of some kind. She gives him a mild grimace in return, eyes going wide as she glances away. Napoleon hums out a quick _huh,_ looks between them again, then turns around and sits properly in the passenger seat so he can pack up the transmitter. She wonders what he took away from the exchange, hopes it wasn’t too much.

They’ll drive for another half hour randomly, then ditch the cab and flag another one, a clean one, to get back to the hotel. She settles back against the bench seat and watches the dark streets slide by outside the window.

At one point, she catches Illya watching her in the rearview mirror, the blue of his eyes arresting in the headlights of a passing car.

\--

She showers for the third time that day, scrubbing off the makeup and the tacky residue of spilled wine, rinsing the scents of cigarette smoke and Lavoie’s cologne from her hair. There’s nothing left of Illya to wash away this time, just sensitivity from a sweet but fading ache. 

She touches herself while the water runs down her back and thinks of the way he had looked at her, the need and the wonder and the hurt.

It’s ten past four in the morning when she stands in front of his door. Her hair is damp in its ponytail, and she is wearing pajamas. He answers on the first knock. Behind him, she can see the glow of a new lamp on the table, his chessboard spread out beneath its circle of light, a half-full tumbler next to it.

She looks up and up and up at him; he always seems so much taller when he’s wearing his boots and she’s barefoot. His face is neutral. She wants to reach out for him, throw his balance off and regain the upper hand, but she makes her arms stay at her sides. She supposes she’s already done enough of that to him today.

“Gaby,” he says at last. “It’s late.”

She feels fragile, exposed, and for a moment she wishes she hadn’t come. She has to curl her toes into the plush hallway carpet to keep herself from bolting. It’s one thing to need and to take - she learned a long time ago how to protect herself, at any expense. She finds now that it’s much harder to ask for forgiveness afterward. 

“Can I stay here tonight?” she asks, finally. Her voice is small and she hates it, hates how weak it makes her sound, how needy, but she forces herself meet his gaze anyway. Maybe there is nothing gentle left in her, but there are parts of her that are still vulnerable, and perhaps she can offer them up instead.

Illya closes his eyes. When he opens them again, she already knows the answer will be yes.


End file.
